"Creativity takes courage" - Henri Matisse

Hire a Copywriter For What They Don’t Write

May 9, 2017

One of the main reasons to work with a copywriter is not because of what they will write about you (although that will be amazing, this is to be expected). It’s because of what they don’t write.

More often than not when I read copy, it says way too much, has no focus, has usually been added to or edited over a period of time so it sounds disjointed and the worst bit is that it tries to say it all.

Imagine trying to put all of the stuff you want customers to know about you, your background and what you offer on just ONE page… that is the state most About pages usually arrive on my desk looking like when people ask me to copy-edit.

Now I’m not against copy-editing but I try not to do it. Yes, it’s a more affordable way to work with a copywriter but you’re better off going away, saving your pennies and coming back in a few months to get your site written properly.

Because I will tear it up. I will only use 15% of what you bring me and it won’t be fact based, it’ll be emotionally driven. When I work on websites, one of the first things I do is schedule a call and dig a bit deeper to find out about the client. Who are they? What makes them passionate? Even, what riles them? What do they respond to emotionally? Maybe I piss them off because I use a word they react badly to – perfect, this lets me dig deeper and find out about them in a highly charged emotional state.

Perhaps I stoke their love for something specific and I can hear them on fire, decoding their language and identifying words that are true to them. My job is not to tell your customers everything about you or to create the picture perfect sales pitch, it’s to strip back, say less, say it with meaning and make it reflect you enough that they know instinctively if you’re right for them with less text, more white space and making every character count.